SOUTH PARK: Bringing Sanity to an Insane World (TV essay)

Emerging on to Television in 1997, the controversial and iconic adult cartoon, South Park, quickly shook up the airwaves. Created and heavily voiced by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the show employs rather (appropriately) crude animation in creating the fictional town of South Park, Colorado, with the main characters being four foul-mouthed fourth graders, among several other hilarious and often outrageous side characters. Unfairly dismissed by some, and simply revolting to others, the show has a bad rap for its being potty-mouth, gross-out humor. While that is certainly a big part of the show -- especially in its earlier episodes -- what people often miss is the piercing social and political satire layered beneath the immense vulgarity. A show that never holds anything back, South Park is easily amongst the most daring, provocative, and flat-out hilarious work seen on television, with much more purpose and intelligence than it is often given credit for. Through examination of the show’s creation, characters and episodes, one sees just how South Park boldly tries to bring sanity to an insane world.

Indeed, what makes South Park so brilliant is its always fresh and sharp reflections and criticisms on not only American pop culture, but also the country’s social and political climate. What sets it apart from most shows, however, is its incredible ability to always remain timely -- strikingly timely, in fact. According to the show’s trivia section from the website, Internet Movie Database, the show has the amazing ability, during the days between the weekly episodes of a season, to write and create new episodes in days and even hours before they are aired, compared to most cartoons that take months to be created (South par. 26).The incredible timeliness of their episodes allows their satire to cut deeper, as they catch the audience right in the moment. Most notable were such episodes like, "Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow", which was about Hurricane Katrina, and "Osama bin Laden has Farty Pants", which was about 9/11, making South Park the first show to use the obviously touchy subject of 9/11 as its topic (South, par. 26). These extremely timely episodes, which directly -- and rather outrageously -- address recent American tragedies no less, are not merely attempts at cheap shock humor, like some critics might suggest; nor is Stone and Parker always trying to be preachy and ram messages down the audience’s throat. It is simply a show which, refreshingly, is not afraid of sharing its opinion about the world’s often abundant chaos, aburdity, and plain illogical and irrational stupidity -- and South Park merely achieves this in a highly entertaining and hilarious fashion.

Consequently, although Stone and Parker are libertarians, which often comes through within the show, South Park often makes an effort of staying in the center of issues, not in a timid attempt of avoiding to take sides, but rather with the distinct purpose to mock the absurdities of the extremes. As Stone put it in an interview on the The Charlie Rose Show, “[We believe] that the people screaming on this side [of an issue] and the people screaming on that side [of an issue] are the same people, and it’s OK to be someone in the middle, laughing at both of them” (Valleau 297). South Park’s target is more often than not political and social extremism. The two protagonists, best friends Stan and Kyle, are two level-headed and intelligent 4th graders who are often far more rational then the outrageous and insane behavior of their parents and other adult characters (Valleau 296). The show often follows the formula of having the two protagonists get lost in a chaotic and silly situation which satirizes something in current American life, and ending eventually with Stan and Kyle, acting as literal mouth-pieces for the ideas of writers Stone and Parker, who almost tongue in cheekly deliver the episode’s main moral. The endings of episodes often as serve as a final moment of respite and a kind-hearted lesson after enduring the previous 20 minutes of vulgarity, crudeness and chaos. It is the several side characters, like Stan’s idiotic father, Randy, and their annoying, racist, right-wing “friend”, Eric Cartman, who are normally the butt of the jokes and the subject of criticism in their actions and beliefs. 

And Cartman, in particular, is one of the shows most notorious, hilarious, and fascinating characters. Beyond being just a smart-alleck, foul-mouthed, and overweight fourth grader, he is often characterized as a heavily racist, anti-semetic, hippie-hating, right-wing nut-job who, despite being technically a supporting character, often takes the central role in several of the episodes. He is usually the main antagonist, working as a conniving, greedy, and loathsome character set up to portray the insane values that Stone and Parker are poking fun at. He is intentionally portrayed as an embarrassing, stupid, and even evil person  -- some episodes even featured him imitating Hitler -- in order to easily ridicule the values that he holds. But in order to understand not only Cartman but also the show’s satirical techniques even better, let’s take an even closer look at some of the show’s best episodes.

For example, in the episode “Mystery of the Urinal Deuce”, the subject is 9/11 conspiracy theories, which were beginning to really run rampant at the time and still do today. The episode begins with Cartman giving a presentation to his class that claims Kyle -- who is a Jew, and there people who think Jews/Israel/Mossad were behind 9/11 -- was responsbile for 9/11. Stan and Kyle, in an attempt to discredit this bogus and ridiculous claim, end up stumbling across other conspiracy theories of 9/11 until they comically get caught in a ‘real’ one, featuring the United States government and George Bush being behind it. Ultimately, as the two boys discover more and more to the mystery, the show highlights, among other things: first, how  incompetent and incapable the government really is, which makes the notion of pulling off 9/11 ridiculous; and secondly, how silly such conspiracy theories are in the first place. Stone and Parker, the libertarians that they are, are amused by the fear and paranoia people have of their government, and thus argue that certain members of the population will just convince themselves to believe that the government is actually that powerful, and consequently that fear then just creates more power for the government which really does not actually exist. At the end, Kyle, still confused, asks who was responsible for 9/11. With Stan replying, “What do you mean? A bunch of pissed-off Muslims” (Urinal).

Additionally, among their finest work is the two part episode, “Go God Go Parts 1 and 2,” from Season 10. Notorious for being a show that has mocked nearly all forms of organized religion, South Park now turned the tables and took aim at extremist atheists. Essentially, in the two part episode, among multiple other subplots, Cartman ends up freezing himself and ends up being thawed 500 years in the future, where the whole world has turned atheist, with religion extinct. In this world, people worship science instead of God. Humorously, these future beings say things like “Praise Science,” or “Science, damn you!” Additionally, there idol, in replacement of Jesus, is the famous athiest writer and intellectual Richard Dawkins. What is most striking about this episode, however, is that it shows the future beings still fighting senseless wars, even in a time where religion is extinct and “science” has now reigns supreme. Many athiests argue that the world’s biggest problems and wars are mostly attributed to organized religion, but Stone and Parker argue that, regardless of  organized religion, people would still be finding things to foolishly worship and they would still be finding reasons to fight senseless wars. Essentially, it is not organizes religion that is necessarily the problem -- it is people! People are inherently irrational and violent. Regardless if they subscribe to the doctrine of supernatural Gods or the ideas of science, people remain to be reckless, violent, insane, and power-hungry. A cynical view, no doubt, but a rather brilliantly astute observation (Go).

And yet sometimes South Park delivers contradictory messages as well, especially concerning issues which are naturally complex. A most notable example is the hilarious episode, “The Snuke,” from season 11. In a parody of the television show 24, the episode begins with Cartman being extremely unreasonably suspicious of a new Muslim boy who just moved into the  town and joined their class. Based on his bigoted beliefs, he of course suspects him of being a terrorist. In coordination with Kyle, who Cartman tricks into believing something serious is going on, they both keep investigating the new Muslim kid at school, but they end up stumbling across a whole separate terrorist plot, planned by Russian mercenaries, to assassinate Hillary Clinton -- a plot which has absolutely nothing to do with the Muslim kid at school. Throughout the episode, Cartman imitates Jack Baurer from 24, and South Park here takes aim at mocking the silly, sensationalist television shows which make a spectacle out of the “War on Terror.” In the end, the real terrorist plot is foiled and Hillary Clinton and South Park is saved, and Kyle discovers that Cartman’s bigoted belief that the new Muslim kid was a terrorist was completely wrong. However, Cartman then points out how his initial bigotry and suspicion of the Muslim kid is what ultimately uncovered the separate terrorist plot. So, what exactly is Stone and Parker trying to express here? Do they side with Kyle’s view, which is that bigots like Cartman are wrong for focusing unwarranted suspicion on Muslims? Or do they think that profiling is a useful way of discovering terrorist plots and protecting people? Perhaps they are somewhere in the middle. Or perhaps they just wanted to make a hilarious episode, regardless of any clear message. Either way, they succeeded (Snuke). 

Furthermore, although definitely not a show for everyone, South Park remains one of the more refreshing, confrontational, and even thought-provoking shows on television, with its outrageous and sharp social and political satire which attempts to mock the absurdities of American and global society. Regardless if one always agrees with South Park is trying to say, just be happy to have found a show which has substance beneath its crude surface.